Centre for Social Innovation - Where Change Happens!

Dear Friends,

As you are well aware, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in the midst of shaping an economic stimulus package, which he will deliver to the nation on January 27.

Wanda Jamieson of www.jhgconsulting.com has written a great piece for the Public Health Agency of Canada comparing various network models applied to the social determinants of health. The report is attached.

She compared the constellation model to a contributions model to a standard network model. Nice summary of the strengths and weaknesses.

It is so fascinating to see how people are gravitating to the network model... but it will be key to move this from basic information sharing to action taking.

Tonya

Charity Village and Elisa Birnbaum did a gret piece on sharing in the nonprofit sector in the most recent  Charity Village posting. Check it out: http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/news/cover.asp

 

For anyone that knows me, you will know that I am fascinated by both the power of social entrepreneurship and the power of collaboration. In effect, the Centre for Social Innovation is the embodiment of both of these.

Our very own Eli Malinsky has just published a pair of articles based on his graduate-level research.  Eli looked at the ways in which technology becomes institutionalized within networks of nonprofit organizations, and how this reflects the unique nature of network structures.

One of the main projects of the emerging Ontario Non Profit Network (ONN) is the Ontario government’s recent process to modernize the nonprofit legal framework in Ontario. It’s pretty clear that if the government is going to make changes to the legal framework for nonprofits in Ontario, that we had better get organized… and indeed, that is what is happening.

When we created the Centre for Social Innovation, one of the driving forces behind it was the instinctive desire to build connections. There was a sense that if we could only just get the social mission sector connecting with each other that they would start to build a deeper knowledge of how our issues are integral to each other. We imagined communities of practice emerging and we dreamt of actually seeing groups working together to move their issues forward. We dreamt of cross-sectoral movement building. Ahh… what a dream

The Social Entrepreneurship Summit was a great success!

With 250 people from a wide range of backgrounds and over 100 people on the waiting list (so sorry), I think that we have tapped into something powerful.